Winner of CNN’s ‘Journalist of the Year’ Award Faked Stories for Years

German magazine Der Spiegelapologised to readers on Wednesday for publishing “invented stories” and content with “distorted facts” by one of its reporters. It identified Claas Relotius, a recent winner of CNN’s “Journalist of the Year” award, as confessing to the production of fake news.

Der Spiegel‘s management wrote:

In recent years, DER SPIEGEL published just under 60 articles by reporter and editor Claas Relotius. He has now admitted that, in several instances, he either invented stories or distorted facts.

Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues. This has been uncovered as a result of tips, internal research and, ultimately, a comprehensive confession by the editor himself.

Relotius’s deception was discovered after Juana Moreno, who worked with Relotius on a fabricated story of an American vigilante group paroling the U.S.-Mexico border entitled, “Hunter’s Border,” shared his suspicions of his colleague’s mendacity with Der Spiegel.

Der Spiegel’s management added:

Claas Relotius committed his deception intentionally, methodically and with criminal intent. For example, he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. Instead, he would reveal, he based the depictions on other media or video recordings. By doing so, he created composite characters of people who actually did exist but whose stories Relotius had fabricated. He also made up dialogue and quotes.

“I am sick and I now have to allow myself be helped,” Relotius told Der Spiegel in his confession. “It wasn’t because of the next big thing. It was fear of failing. My pressure to not be able to fail got ever bigger the more successful I became.”

The Guardian reported:

[Claas Relotius] resigned after admitting to the scam. He had written for the magazine for seven years and won numerous awards for his investigative journalism.

…

Earlier this month, he won Germany’s Reporterpreis (Reporter of the Year) for his story about a young Syrian boy, which the jurors praised for its “lightness, poetry and relevance”. It has since emerged that all the sources for his reportage were at best hazy, and much of what he wrote was made up.

Comments

December 23, 2018 - 11:09 am

13

This “journalist” should have all of the alphabet networks on both side of the 49th offering him a job. One “journalist” like this guy is cheaper and will reap his employer huge return on investment.

Oddly in the City (town) of Chilliwack on Dec. 22 2018 their were protesters wearing yellow jackets. They were on every corner and every entrance to the two malls at Vedder and Luckakuck. They were on both sides of the overpass over highway 1.
Aprox 50 people with signs calling Trudeau treasonous for his UN migration sell out. Many signs calling for tighter control over immigration. They did not appear to be the usual protest crowd they looked like well dressed shoppers.
I drove by them at 1100 am. Not a bit of news coverage.